Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMRL) List Serve

Message ID: 10602

Date: 2019-12-20

Author:Tyson, Katherine

Subject:Re: The Boston Globe and ProPublica's CAPTA Series

Dear Emily, Thank you for sending this. I am soooo glad you have done this, BRAVO! I will use the article in my research and teaching. Another aspect of this you could study concerns obstacles social workers, physicians, and other care providers who are mandated reporters experience when they try to get public child protection services to take observations of child maltreatment seriously, indicate the need for protection, and then provide services to families. The number of children abused and neglected that care providers try to bring to the attention of child protective services FAR EXCEEDS the number of kids who ever get served by child protection. I would guess the ratio is at least 40 reports to every 1 child who gets protected, with as many as 10 reports happening for many children who still are never served. Yet another aspect of this problem is the discrepancy between what child protection laws say (even suspected child maltreatment should be reported and of concern) and what other laws do to protect parents' rights to their children (as property, in US). For instance, it is quite common that a parent who has documented violence against a partner still has visitation rights (even overnight) with the child, unless there is documented evidence of severe physical endangerment of that child by that parent. This law stands even though research demonstrates that partner violence indicates serious risk of child maltreatment. In 19 states, even convicted rapists, whose rape resulted in the pregnancy, have the right to visitation of that child born out of rape. These parental rights laws terrorize children and need to be addressed if child protection is to become a reality in the US. The child protection system is badly broken and I am so glad your excellent reporting is bringing this to public attention so we can do better. All best wishes, Katherine Tyson McCrea, Ph.D., M.Div., L.C.S.W. (she, her, hers) Professor Loyola University of Chicago School of Social Work 1 East Pearson Street #422 Chicago, Illinois 60611 ktyson@luc.edu 312-915-7028 312-915-7645 (f) http://works.bepress.com/katherine_mcrea http://empoweringcounselingprogram.weebly.com/ "The power of hope … the belief that something better is always possible if you’re willing to work for it and fight for it.” Michelle Obama "A child asked Fr. Henri Nouwen: 'How big is God?' Fr. Henri: 'As big as your heart. And your heart is as big as the universe.'" ________________________________ From: bounce-124223088-12744214@list.cornell.edu on behalf of Palmer, Emily Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2019 1:13 PM To: child-maltreatment-research-l@list.cornell.edu Subject: The Boston Globe & ProPublica's CAPTA Series Good afternoon! I'm a reporter with The Boston Globe, who contacted this listserv (and was provided with many valuable sources) for a long-term project looking at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Four years and two national databases later, I wanted to reach back out to say thank you and provide you with information and links to the project. Please share! How many children die of abuse and neglect each year and which states follow the federal law designed to protect them? The answer: no one knows and no one does. This week The Boston Globe and ProPublica published an in-depth investigation looking at the state of child abuse in America, and the primary federal law, known as CAPTA, aimed at preventing it. In order to report the project (and determine the answers given above), a team of journalists spent four years collecting records to create two national databases. The first is the country's most comprehensive database of child death by abuse and neglect, capturing some 7,000 deaths over a five-year period. The second is the first state-by-state compliance assessment of CAPTA ever conducted, which looked at five provisions within the law and determined where all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico came up short. Here is the project: * "The federal government has one main law to prevent child abuse. No state follows all of it. ": Some 700,000 American children experience abuse and neglect each year, but the law designed to prevent that has been broken for decades. This explanatory feature explores the weaknesses of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the nation's primary child abuse prevention law, which is weakly written and poorly funded. The article dives into Mississippi's child welfare system , which is middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of the country. The article also includes clickable maps with the database measuring state-by-state compliance with CAPTA. You can hover over your state to see how it measures up when looking at such provisions as: how state protect drug-affected infants, provide representation for abuse victims in court and produce public reports about the children who die there. (This survey explainer describes how states were measured.) * "How many children die from abuse? The Globe and ProPublica wanted to find out. ": There is no national definition of abuse or neglect, so every state defines it for themselves. As a result, it is impossible to know how many children die of abuse and neglect in the United States each year. Congress had a chance to fix this in a reauthorization of CAPTA, expected early this year, but earlier in December they chose not to do this. As a result, there is no complete national database of child deaths in the country - the federal government loosely looks at the issue through a database that states may voluntarily contribute to, but that database is inaccurate because it does not account for the difference in definitions across state lines. Therefore, The Globe and ProPublica requested five years of fatality data from every state and have produced the most detailed database of child fatalities in the country, including information about how individual children were harmed and who harmed them. Data is searchable by state and by county. Additionally, the database proves that the federal government's voluntary database undercounts deaths in the country, and that we fall far short in knowing who or how many of our children are dying of abuse and neglect each year. Thanks again! Best, Emily Palmer Spotlight Fellow emily.palmer@globe.com 919.601.7282 (cell)

Dear Emily, Thank you for sending this. I am soooo glad you have done this, BRAVO! I will use the article in my research and teaching. Another aspect of this you could study concerns obstacles social workers, physicians, and other care providers who are mandated reporters experience when they try to get public child protection services to take observations of child maltreatment seriously, indicate the need for protection, and then provide services to families. The number of children abused and neglected that care providers try to bring to the attention of child protective services FAR EXCEEDS the number of kids who ever get served by child protection. I would guess the ratio is at least 40 reports to every 1 child who gets protected, with as many as 10 reports happening for many children who still are never served. Yet another aspect of this problem is the discrepancy between what child protection laws say (even suspected child maltreatment should be reported and of concern) and what other laws do to protect parents' rights to their children (as property, in US). For instance, it is quite common that a parent who has documented violence against a partner still has visitation rights (even overnight) with the child, unless there is documented evidence of severe physical endangerment of that child by that parent. This law stands even though research demonstrates that partner violence indicates serious risk of child maltreatment. In 19 states, even convicted rapists, whose rape resulted in the pregnancy, have the right to visitation of that child born out of rape. These parental rights laws terrorize children and need to be addressed if child protection is to become a reality in the US. The child protection system is badly broken and I am so glad your excellent reporting is bringing this to public attention so we can do better. All best wishes, Katherine Tyson McCrea, Ph.D., M.Div., L.C.S.W. (she, her, hers) Professor Loyola University of Chicago School of Social Work 1 East Pearson Street #422 Chicago, Illinois 60611 ktysonluc.edu 312-915-7028 312-915-7645 (f) http://works.bepress.com/katherine_mcrea http://empoweringcounselingprogram.weebly.com/ "The power of hope … the belief that something better is always possible if you’re willing to work for it and fight for it.” Michelle Obama "A child asked Fr. Henri Nouwen: 'How big is God?' Fr. Henri: 'As big as your heart. And your heart is as big as the universe.'" ________________________________ From: bounce-124223088-12744214list.cornell.edu on behalf of Palmer, Emily Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2019 1:13 PM To: child-maltreatment-research-llist.cornell.edu Subject: The Boston Globe & ProPublica's CAPTA Series Good afternoon! I'm a reporter with The Boston Globe, who contacted this listserv (and was provided with many valuable sources) for a long-term project looking at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Four years and two national databases later, I wanted to reach back out to say thank you and provide you with information and links to the project. Please share! How many children die of abuse and neglect each year and which states follow the federal law designed to protect them? The answer: no one knows and no one does. This week The Boston Globe and ProPublica published an in-depth investigation looking at the state of child abuse in America, and the primary federal law, known as CAPTA, aimed at preventing it. In order to report the project (and determine the answers given above), a team of journalists spent four years collecting records to create two national databases. The first is the country's most comprehensive database of child death by abuse and neglect, capturing some 7,000 deaths over a five-year period. The second is the first state-by-state compliance assessment of CAPTA ever conducted, which looked at five provisions within the law and determined where all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico came up short. Here is the project: * "The federal government has one main law to prevent child abuse. No state follows all of it. ": Some 700,000 American children experience abuse and neglect each year, but the law designed to prevent that has been broken for decades. This explanatory feature explores the weaknesses of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the nation's primary child abuse prevention law, which is weakly written and poorly funded. The article dives into Mississippi's child welfare system , which is middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of the country. The article also includes clickable maps with the database measuring state-by-state compliance with CAPTA. You can hover over your state to see how it measures up when looking at such provisions as: how state protect drug-affected infants, provide representation for abuse victims in court and produce public reports about the children who die there. (This survey explainer describes how states were measured.) * "How many children die from abuse? The Globe and ProPublica wanted to find out. ": There is no national definition of abuse or neglect, so every state defines it for themselves. As a result, it is impossible to know how many children die of abuse and neglect in the United States each year. Congress had a chance to fix this in a reauthorization of CAPTA, expected early this year, but earlier in December they chose not to do this. As a result, there is no complete national database of child deaths in the country - the federal government loosely looks at the issue through a database that states may voluntarily contribute to, but that database is inaccurate because it does not account for the difference in definitions across state lines. Therefore, The Globe and ProPublica requested five years of fatality data from every state and have produced the most detailed database of child fatalities in the country, including information about how individual children were harmed and who harmed them. Data is searchable by state and by county. Additionally, the database proves that the federal government's voluntary database undercounts deaths in the country, and that we fall far short in knowing who or how many of our children are dying of abuse and neglect each year. Thanks again! Best, Emily Palmer Spotlight Fellow emily.palmerglobe.com 919.601.7282 (cell)